Last Monday when I got home after a long weekend, I was horrified to discover that the thick plaster layer of my ceiling came crashing down, leaving a mess on the floor. OMG I thought. My precious set of Hello Kitty porcelain figurines, which have been sitting on the corner table below the area, were also covered in some debris but phew…. they remained unharmed. Not even a single scratch on a single one! And my Hello Kitty stuffed toys, sitting on my green arm-chair nearby, had not even a speck of dust. In fact, the cause of the ceiling damage is the result of a roof leakage which has since been sealed up. And even then, the leakage narrowly missed those lucky kitties too! I shall count my blessings from now. And hence I decided to paint about it so I can remind myself how lucky I am when the going gets tough.
I made the background, of course, all in pink. Wanted to make this painting as cute and happy as possible. After a coat of white gesso, I spritzed the paper with Dylusions ink spray in Rose Quartz in both plain and shimmer versions. I let it dry and wanted again to try Gelli printing this time using acrylic ink. Unfortunately the pink was so light that it didn’t work this time. So instead I moved on and stencilled in the left half with distressed ink and the right half with acrylic ink to experiment. Not satisfied, I further stamped the sides using bubble wrap and Staz-on ink. At this stage I stopped fussing as I was going to paint over this piece anyway!
So what to paint on? I was hoping to paint another Little One or Mini Me with a big smile but was afraid that as the background was very dotted, the poor girl would look spotty like she had the measles! So how about some cute animals? Even if a tad spotted, they will still look sweet. So bunny, kitty and bear again!
And now colour away! All in acrylic paint. (Sorry about the inconsistent photo quality as it’s due to painting in different parts of the day and hence the difference in light). First, white for the bunny with part-pink ears (Dylusions Rose Quartz)’ followed by mixing the remaining white with Sepia acrylic ink for the bear and finally Dylusions Slate Grey for the kitten.
And now for the outfit! This time instead of working with analogous colours as I’ve been doing in the past few paintings, I thought I’d try complimentary ones. Thus I opted for green. A light pistachio green in the form of Mushy Peas with Dylusions paint. Looks great! Then I added flower cut-outs on the bunny and bear ears using an old scrap from a previous work. Amazing what you find in your scrap heap! After drawing in the smiling eyes with Uni Posca pens, I stamped in a tiny Hello Kitty detail on the bunny’s shirt as a momentum behind painting this piece in the first place!
What a sweet happy painting! So innocent as well as positive. The sort when feeling down you’d look at it and feel loads better. And as said earlier, something to remind myself of how lucky I am. And yes, stay happy-go-lucky! Definitely should be creating more like this. Oh and check out the kawaii close-ups!
My Kawaii Quarter 